diversifying the meta

The question is, can the meta be diversified without changes to balance or with minimal changes?

With the glorious uber ladder lurking in the shadows, I think now is a good time to discuss and experiment.

Playing within the meta concept I was able to break top 50 on pastats ezpz.

Trying other stuff quickly dropped me to 260th- place.

Has anybody been able to create a concept that possible can hold its own vs meta with minimal changes.

Think my next experiment will consist of two air fact power gen vehical fact followed with the three pg 3 vehical fact etc.

Open two air fabbers then bombers. From 1st af then pure fighter from second. Thought being bombers to counter bot harass fighters to protect fabbers and bombers with facts making tanks for primary assault force mix in a couple fabs for when the airfabs eventually get sniped.

I think this could maybe work, could maybe work vs a equal skilled player with a buff to the bomber in the bomber bot relationship.

After I give this an honest try I'm outta of ideas.

Do you guys have any?

Think uber will have a big little or no balance changes with the upcoming ladder?

Grand competitive annihilation is on the horizon, will you be ready?

Lower dox speed to 15 and LOS a tad bit.

You could also return dox to the original value of 90 metal

The Dox meta is a problem in that it locks out a lot of other options, because dominating the early game means that you never progress to any later strategies. Naval being so direly underpowered (and Dox amphibious travel being so overpowered, in some respects) as to cause people to avoid water planets doesn't help either, as that entire spectrum of two-front warfare stops showing up.

I feel like I have a plethora of options going into most matches; air supremacy, vehicle + combat fabber ground domination, bot-based territory control/harass, forward artillery pushes, etc... as well as T2/T2-economy-dependent strats like boom-bot waves, Orbital sieges, Holkins bombardment, Kestrel harass squads, multi-front teleporter offenses, peppered nuke use and the ever-entertaining Halley scramble... but those never work against a player who's caught onto the Dox meta because they establish dominance very, very quickly. My perspective might be skewed, however, as I mostly play team games and don't see as much Dox spam.

With any luck, the addition of a ladder will put more scrutiny on the balance and provide useful data. Beyond that we can only guess for now.

Why only minimal changes? I thought balance required some pretty big changes?

Because it seems many top players don't want Huge overalls that risk breaking competitive play.

We need to decrease the eco output of the commander to back what it was (or somewhere about there) and increase its storage.

Right now the only viable strategy is to rush. Build lots of factories real quick and build lots of units real quick.

We need to bring back the importance of expansion. We need to have a diverse set of opening builds, right now we don't have that.

If we decrease the Commander's eco production and increase the storage, then we can still go factory first, but don't have to. Players could still go for a rush, but if they fail to rush, then their eco would be way behind of the person who opted to go for economic expansion.

Remember how we used to have a factory building nothing but fabricators? Well now people will build only one or three fabricators.

By bringing back the importance of expansion, we open up so much more diversity to the game. And, we drastically increase the skill cap. Players need to scout, expand, raid the expansions, attack the base... so much moreso than with the current rush meta.

To be honest, casting games is pretty boring for me these days. Pretty much all of the games are exactly the same.

tldr – bring back the importance of expansion, which will increase the diversity.

remove the dox's ablility to shoot air and BRING BACK THE STINGER!

There's only one meta - dox.

People have made tanks work but I don't think it's a solid plan compared to dox. That's part of the reason why i haven't played 1v1 since october 5th.

I think we are pretty close. the veh strat you mention is fine against a dox only player. But any decent player will counter your air with their own. It all depends on the player too. If you don't have 80+ apm you won't be able to pull of a dox spam build well enough to beat a good veh and air player. Map dependant (no water and metal density) I would rather go 1 fabber veh and heavier than opponents air than a dox spam build.

Right now there are counters to every build but the meta as you correctly point out is dox spam with air support.

why are we mulling over the same stuff over and over and over again? when Uber cares they'll come back to the forum and as soon as they do, they'll be absolutely blinded by the amount of dox posts and according to all sane logic, should do something about it.

The lack of change to the dox politic forces the conclusion that Uber does not care.

To be fair, jables has mentioned that they're looking at both dox and naval in their next balance pass - whether or not that coincides with the ladders is unknown.

We're doing it for the dox. It makes them happy.

There is only one dominating strategy because we all play, since the alpha, on the same type on map : flat lands with brushes placed in a noisy way where you can attack a base from 360°

Try to dox rush on my custom map, it won't end very well thanks to the corridors and chokes.

Maybe instead of complaining about a single dominating strategy, we should play on different maps.

I beat battlebear with hard tanks on a nice lava map which had a perfect mountain pass leading to his base.... even now terrain can play a big part.... The system editor will increase its effect imo

+1 for better map generation?

Better t1 pgens

Better as in more distinct?

Possibly, there could be many different methodology's applied rather then simple, random scattering across the land.

Everything from realistic formations of land, water, hill and prop type to strategic balance of terrain placement to generate a efficient and clean map type where terrain directly affects the gameplay with choke points and mex placement, so and so.

Play on Lava planets with low to medium landmass and many landbridges, high ammount of Lava ...

Remove the amphibiousness (is that a word?) of the Dox (it is completely arbitrary and without any point) and remove their ability to shoot air and reintroduce the Stinger.